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Wikimania 2023 Welcoming Program Submissions
Do you want to host an in-person or virtual session at Wikimania 2023? Maybe a hands-on workshop, a lively discussion, a fun performance, a catchy poster, or a memorable lightning talk? Submissions are open until March 28. The event will have dedicated hybrid blocks, so virtual submissions and pre-recorded content are also welcome. If you have any questions, please join us at an upcoming conversation on March 12 or 19, or reach out by email at wikimania@wikimedia.org or on Telegram. More information on-wiki.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by MediaWiki message delivery (talk • contribs) 15:44, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
The Minecraft problem
Has anyone noticed that the Minecraft page thinks that Steve and Alex are the only skins and that it has been like that for TWO MONTHS!? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C8:968C:9001:B9C7:5E23:C4EF:36A7 (talk) 19:23, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
- Questions about individual pages should be posted on a talk page for that subject. You're looking for Talk:Minecraft. Or if you can find a reliable source to back it up, you can make the change yourself. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 04:05, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
- That may depend on how big a Minecraft fan one is. Having known a fair number of serious gamers, I can see how such a thing could be considered important at a system level. – AndyFielding (talk) 08:53, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
Portal issue in Vector 2022
Portal text is sandwiched besides images in Vector 2022. Compare Vector legacy to Vector 2022. Selected images also appear smaller. Is this the end of portals? (I'm sure all 12 of you that still use portals are very upset by this right now.) Schierbecker (talk) 19:47, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
- @SGrabarczuk (WMF) will probably know whether this has been reported before.
- I don't see any MOS:SANDWICHING on my screen, but I understand this to be something that depends strongly on your personal screen size and font settings. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:11, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
- i don't see a problem. If there is a problem for you, than likely there was a problem before for others using that screenwidth. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:41, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
Insects and athletes
As a long-time (but perpetually technically baffled) WP contributor, I've noticed that nearly every other Random Page (by far, the best way to edit) seems to be about an insect, an athlete, or an athletic event. I've always assumed there were many more insects on the planet than athletes or athletics-related things—but is it possible I've been mistaken? Could there be comparable numbers of them? – AndyFielding (talk) 08:59, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
- A lot of editors are interested in sports. See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#RfC on draftifying a subset of mass-created Olympian microstubs for a (very long) discussion on the topic of whether we should remove some poorly sourced articles about athletes. Donald Albury 13:36, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
- The number of articles we have on a given topic is driven by what our editors want to write about. You could get a vague idea of the relative popularity of insects vs athletics by looking at Category:Insects and Category:Athletic sports. FWIW, I just got 10 random articles. Three of them were sports related. So, yeah, it does seem to be a popular topic. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:06, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
- For what it's worth, I ran some numbers about six months ago - I was able to identify in the region of 600k biographies of sportspeople, a little under 10% of all articles. Don't have numbers for sports events and seasons and so forth but I would guess another couple of hundred thousand easily. Andrew Gray (talk) 17:12, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
Shouldn't we have a television network?
Shouldn't Wikipedia have a Wikipedia television network with shows, etc, showcasing our works, maybe news, and other aspects of culture which are presented at the project? I get that we already have an online encyclopedia, but for those without access to a computer? Antonio Wants to be the first Wikipedia TV celebrity Martin (Please discuss) 14:44, March 18, 2023 (UTC) Antonio Martin (talk) 14:45, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
- That's an intriguing idea, but meta:Wikimedia Forum would be a better place to suggest it. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:58, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
- An over-the-air television station is expensive and each one can only reach a local market. A cable access channel is relatively cheaper to produce but getting a slot on a cable provider is a challenge and again, each provider only reaches a specific market. An Internet-based media channel is more cost-effective for the number of people it reaches, in spite of its limitations of requiring viewers to have Internet access and an Internet-connected viewing device. Because of the wealth of information available globally on the Internet and video-sharing sites such as YouTube, people everywhere are motivated to obtain some minimal access to these resources, beyond just access to Wikipedia. isaacl (talk) 16:37, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
- Yes. Not a station but a channel, and not a channel on local Cable TV but A channel on Youtube, for example. Then the principle cost is production, not distribution. Jim.henderson (talk) 01:31, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
- Something to watch for is how the content from Wikipedia is presented. A show (TV/YouTube/etc) is different from a text article. You wouldn't want someone reading an article to the camera. So, how do you make it engaging for viewers? As a faint indication of what could happen, I have blogged on topics that also have articles in Wikipedia that I have contributed to. In my blog posts I have linked to relevant WP articles, but I also included analysis and speculation that I could not put in Wikipedia. I suspect that anyone trying to adapt a Wikipedia article to a video presentation is going to find WP policies and guidelines too restricting. Think docudramas, with invented dialogue, or the visual aids that would be needed for most subjects. Good documentaries can take years to develop. How much work, and how much outside material, would be needed to create even a five or ten minute segment on a topic based on a Wikipedia article that would engage viewers? - Donald Albury 15:34, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
- Someone making videos on another site wouldn't be subject to Wikipedia policies (beyond satisfying licensing requirements). There are plenty of explainer videos out there that draw upon Wikipedia and other sources. For example, the Half as Interesting YouTube channel, devoted to brief explainers, started out covering small tidbits gleaned from Wikipedia articles. I absolutely agree that to do it well, significant effort has to be made, and graphics is what's going to make best use of the video format. isaacl (talk) 21:00, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
- A video version of a Wikipedia article is a bad idea. Screenwriting is a completely different kind of writing; everything is organized differently from the start. An illustrated video documentary of a topic that is also covered by an encyclopedia article, yes that can work, though composing and editing it is a much bigger job than writing an article. The other things a Wikipedia TV channel can do better are interviews, lectures, panel discussions, and how-to pieces. And those are what the existing Youtube channel "Wikipedia Weekly" does. Those things could be done better and they could be done more. More of them could be linked from articles, and the various videos that we already have in Commons could be better linked, catalogued and organized. Basically, that's it. Wikipedia Weekly on YouTube Jim.henderson (talk) 00:04, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
- I highly recommend Understanding Wikis and Wikipedia. The market for broadcast educational content on TV is very small. See also AtheistTV. Schierbecker (talk) 18:16, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
WP:NOCONFED
Hello, everyone! Editors who are interested in the Politics of the United States, the American Civil War, neo-Confederates and the Southern United States (or in some other related subject) might be interested in WP:NOCONFED as well. It is a relatively new essay (not a policy or guideline, mind you!) dealing with the presence and activities of neo-Confederates on Wikipedia. — Sundostund mppria (talk / contribs) 03:45, 23 March 2023 (UTC)